Free Republic

Throughout Islam's history, whenever a region was conquered, one of the first signs of consolidation was/is the erection of a mosque atop the sacred sites of the vanquished: the pagan Ka'ba temple in Arabia was converted into Islam's holiest site, the mosque of Mecca; the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest site, was built atop Solomon's temple in Jerusalem; the Umayyad mosque was built atop the Church of St. John the Baptist; and the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque upon the conquest of Constantinople. As for the literal wording of the mosque project, "Cordoba House," it offers opposing paradigms...

May I begin, by saying, I love this country, the United States of America, It is the greatest hope in the history of our planet, save the works of the prophets of God. I add that I have never voted for a Democrat - and I probably never will - although JFK did cut taxes and I wish he had lived longer. Also: I believe that we were endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, foremost being the freedom of speech. Jim Robinson, Thank you. So: If I be banned for what I am about to write, then I...

The organization planning to build an Islamic community center near the World Trade Center said the imam who has been the public face of the project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, will be playing a reduced role in the facility. The nonprofit group Park51 announced Friday that it had named a new imam to help lead religious programing so that Rauf could focus on other initiatives. Rauf announced late this fall that he would be starting a global movement that would fight extremism and promote better relations between people of different faiths and cultures. He is set to start a national...

They're emailing each other? The New York Daily News reported Thursday that "Mayor Bloomberg's top deputies went to great lengths to help those trying to build a mosque at Ground Zero - even drafting a letter to the community board for them, newly released documents show. City Hall on Thursday released a flurry of emails between its brass and Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam pushing to build a mosque near the sensitive site, and his supporters." It's worse than we imagined. The release of these documents, emails and various exchanges between Mayor Bloomberg's office and the radical Imam Rauf and...

Saudi Arabia Says It's Not Involved In NYC Ground Zero Mosque Monday, Dec 20, 2010RIYADH (Zawya Dow Jones)--Saudi Arabia said late Monday it is neither involved in plans to build a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York, nor in possible talks to move the mosque to a less controversial site in Manhattan. The kingdom "has no involvement, either directly or indirectly, with Park 51, formerly known as Cordoba House, in New York City, nor is it involved --in anyway--in talks that may be taking place to relocate the proposed community center," the country's embassy...

"Healing" Imam Rauf of Ground Zero Mega Mosque Latest Outreach: Sues 911 First Responder Who was Trapped in the "Rubble" For "Bigotry" More of radical Imam Rauf's special brand of "healing and outreach." Vincent Forras spoke at our June 6th Rally against the Ground Zero mega mosque here and here. Forras was one of the first firefighters who answered the call on the day of the bloodiest, most heinous attack ever on American soil by Muslim terrorists. Forras was buried under the rubble for hours. Imam Rauf's book title, remember, was "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center...

Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer Spencer and I are speaking at Temple University next week (where the craven quislings tried to silence Geert Wilders after trying to ban him). Thought you might like a look at the open minded "Democratic Socialists" at Temple. Here is the note from the brave organizers: At a State of the Campus Address in which at least 280 leaders from all student organizations were present, the Democratic Socialists announced that they were organizing a protest against TU Purpose's Islamophobic event next week. They concluded by calling TU Purpose and me Bigots. Atlas readers heads up....

The New York Post reports: The religious leader behind the proposed mosque near Ground Zero promised yesterday to allow the US government to sign off on anyone who donates to the $100 million project. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told "60 Minutes" that to reduce fears that terror organizations would contribute to the project, he'll ask US officials to approve the sources of funding. Rauf added that the mosque and Islamic cultural center will have a board of directors that will include Muslims, Christians and Jews. Imam Rauf advocates for discriminatory and barbaric sharia law and that is be imposed here...

“Bridge builder” Imam Feisal Abdel Rauf, the Muslim cleric behind plans for the Ground Zero mosque, has now been exposed as a man of shrewd cunning and as a calculating stealth jihadist who supports the creation of an Islamic State, “The Ummah,” right here in America. An interview has surfaced in which, after being assured that it has ended, Imam Rauf speaks “off-the-record” and reveals some intriguing plans and views that he has regarding America and the world. The interview, given on June 20th, 2006, sees Rauf speaking about his “game plan” for achieving an Islamic State without borders, which...

Islamofascism: A panel of national security experts concludes that Shariah law is a totalitarian ideology that is being used by advocates of tolerance to undermine the security of the United States. Challenging the prevailing political correctness regarding tolerance, outreach and endless apologies to the Muslim world for defending ourselves against terrorism, the 177-page report by the Center for Security Policy, "Shariah: The New Threat To America," objectively analyzes the assault on the West by Islamofascism and warns of the grave threat posed by those who seek to use Shariah law to undermine America's legal system, Constitution, national security and way...

(CNN) -- Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the religious leader behind plans to erect an Islamic center and mosque a few blocks from New York's ground zero, said Wednesday night that moving it to another location would embolden Islamic radicals and help them incite violence against Americans. "If we move from that location, the story will be the radicals have taken over the discourse," Rauf told CNN's Soledad O'Brien on "Larry King Live." Rauf said he was speaking about "radicals" on both sides of the debate on the Islamic center. "Our national security now hinges on how we negotiate this, how...

AS my flight approached America last weekend, my mind circled back to the furor that has broken out over plans to build Cordoba House, a community center in Lower Manhattan.I have been away from home for two months, speaking abroad about cooperation among people from different religions. Every day, including the past two weeks spent representing my country on a State Department tour in the Middle East, I have been struck by how the controversy has riveted the attention of Americans, as well as nearly everyone I met in my travels. We have all been awed by how inflamed and...

If you have to ask how it is that, nine years after the Twin Towers fell, Americans still have a negative impression of Islam, consider this: From September 11, 2001 forward, we have fought two bloody wars against savage Islamist fighters, and we have witnessed, in no particular order or priority, the shoe-bomb attempt, the gruesome murders of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, the mutilated corpses on the Fallujah bridge, the London and Madrid subway attacks, the murder of Theo van Gogh, the cartoon riots, the foiled British airliner attack, the Bombay massacres, the Fort Hood massacre, the foiled Fort...

The leader of the Ground Zero mosque got hugely valuable tax-exempt status for a Muslim organization he founded after claiming as many as 500 of its members prayed daily in a small, one-bedroom Upper West Side apartment also listed as his wife's residence, The Post has learned. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf sought "church status" -- an official IRS term for a house of worship of any religion -- for the American Sufi Muslim Association, or ASMA, in 1998. The feds granted the request. "Church status" is more than just an exemption -- it means never having to pay taxes, file...

The Park51 mosque and community center near Ground Zero is not Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s first venture into real estate development. As The Record reports, beginning in the late 1970s, Rauf acquired five apartment buildings in Union City, North Bergen, and Palisades Park, all urban areas along the New Jersey bank of the Hudson River. He developed the properties with the help a series of government grants and loans totaling in the millions — including $384,000 in 1989 endorsed by Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), then mayor of Union City, and $1,295,000 underwritten by then Hudson County executive Robert C....

(CNSNews.com) -- A coalition of American Muslims has released a Public Service Announcement (PSA) to combat what they call “anti-Muslim rhetoric stemming from the Islamic center issue” in New York City. The PSA says Muslims do not want to “take over this country” and do not “support terrorism of any form.” “We aren’t associated with any group. We maintain our independence and everyone who worked on this did pro bono and paid for the costs out of their own pockets,” Hassan Ahmad, project manager of the initiative called "My Faith My Voice,” told CNSNews.com. "There is no organization behind this,”...

The names of the city that we now call New York bear witness to successive waves of conquerors/colonizers. First came the Dutch, who named the city "New Amsterdam," then gave way to the British who renamed it "New York." Now come Muslims invoking the name of the Spanish city that was the seat of the Caliphate of Iberia and North Africa. In A.D. 711, Muslim hordes conquered Spain for Islam's first inroad into Western Europe. The first mosque was built in the Spanish city of Cordoba, the site of a historic Islamic victory in conquest and subjugation of Spain and...

Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has come out strongly in support of the controversial Islamic center proposed for construction in New York, even as his party appears to be using opposition to the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" as a campaign issue. In an interview over the weekend with Fox 13 News in Salt Lake City, Hatch noted that "there's a huge . . . lack of support throughout the country for Islam to build that mosque there, but that should not make a difference if they decide to do it." "I'd be the first to stand up for their...

Imam Behind Park51 Ignores Low-Income Tenants Pleas, They SayThe Muslim imam who plans to build a controversial Islamic center near Ground Zero should first take on a smaller project, like ridding his New Jersey apartment buildings of rats and bedbugs, angry tenants told ABCNews.com. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf owns buildings across the Hudson River in several New Jersey cities, including Union City, North Bergen and Palisades Park, which he reportedly renovated with tax dollars. Residents, many of whom are immigrants and most of whom are working-class Hispanic Catholics, say they have complained about unsanitary conditions for years. The imam, however,...

Court records from Florida to New York state reveal that Sharif and his younger brother, Samir "Sammy" El-Gamal, 35, a partner with him in his company SoHo Properties, both have a history replete with intersections with tax and debt issues, dating back to at least 1994 and continuing into this year. In one instance, Sharif told a court he didn't hit a tenant from whom his brother and he were trying to collect back rent. He said to police, the tenant's "face could have run into my hand." The New York Post reported yesterday that Sharif and SoHo Properties are...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the soi-disant Cordoba Initiative, has gotten all the attention he deserves for his astonishingly insensitive attempt to build a 13-story mosque and community center at the site of Ground Zero. Rauf has largely escaped attention for his efforts to build a sawed-off version of the same on the grounds of the venerable and historically Christian Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. Although the resistance to Rauf at Chautauqua has not made the news, it is deeply felt, and it is coming from both Christians and Jews. As shall be seen, the forced feeding...

Thursday during the 1 p.m. hour, CNN’s “Newsroom,” this exchange took place between CNN reporter Ali Velshi andTime Magazine’s deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh: VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions. GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse- VELSHI: Yeah- GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group- paid...

New audio has surfaced of the imam behind the controversial mosque near Ground Zero allegedly telling an audience overseas that the United States has been far more deadly than al-Qaeda. "We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non Muslims," Feisal Abdul Rauf said at a 2005 lecture sponsored by the University of South Australia. After discussing the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Rauf went on to argue that America is to blame for its testy relationship with Islamic countries.

At Sunday's Ground Zero mosque protest, I spoke to one guy who had been with the counter-protesters, Joey “Boots” Bassolino, immediately after the police pulled him out from the crowd. What happened, I asked? “There was a guy standing up, a Pakistani guy, who had identified himself as a Pakistani, and he said: ‘We’re not going to sit there and back these Zionist Jews,’” Bassolino recounted, still clearly a little shaken up. “And I’m like, whoa, wait a minute. What’s up with the racism? And they’re like, ‘what’s racist about that?’” The guy behind Bassolino yelled “f*** you,” reached forward,...

The real issue behind the controversy that has erupted over plans to build a 15-story cultural center, mosque and madrassa a few yards from Ground Zero is not only about the mysterious funding behind the Cordoba Center initiative, or whether or not its founders and backers have malign intentions. It is primarily about understanding how Muslims across the world, in particular Islamists, would view the conversion of the site of the greatest Muslim attack on U.S. soil into a Muslim house of worship. Given the long history of mosque-building following Muslim military victories, the building of the Cordoba House on...

Thursday during the 1 PM hour CNN’s “Newsroom,” this exchange took place between CNN reporter Ali Velshi and Time Magazine’s deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh: VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions. GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse- VELSHI: Yeah- GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group-...

Some of the imam’s American critics said they fear he is using the taxpayer-funded trip to raise money and rally support in the Muslim world for the mosque. “I think there is no place for this,” said the Rev. Franklin Graham, who is the son of evangelist Billy Graham and opposes the Islamic center and mosque. “Can you imagine if the State Department paid to send me on a trip anywhere? The separation of church and state — the critics would have been howling.”

The Mosque issue isn't going away and it just got more interesting. Apparently Steve Emerson, Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism (a large storehouse of archival data and intelligence on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups), has unearthed hours of audio in which Imam Rauf sounds not so moderate after all. The audio hasn't been released yet, nor the context, but from the sounds of it....the context won't matter a whole lot: Steve Emerson has unearthed 13 hours of audio tape of Imam Rauf. Emerson and his team of investigators has spent the past four weeks going through...

By Judy Shedlock First we overlooked the travesty of the Shanksville, Pennsylvania “Crescent of Embrace” memorial “honoring” those killed on Flight 93 on 9/11. Surely the god of political correctness has been appeased, and we can go back to sleep. So what’s the problem? The problem is the Cordoba Initiative, better known as the Mosque at Ground Zero. While our own Memorial to the Victims of 9/11 flounders, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has endorsed the building of the mosque at Ground Zero as the epitome of the exercise of freedom of religion. The two sides on...

Americans have a short memory span, and most Americans are entirely ignorant of the significance to Muslims of the building of a mosque on the hallowed ground of those they have conquered. The dispute about the building of a mosque adjacent to the site of the Twin Towers is not about religious freedom, it is about stopping Islamic fundamentalists from celebrating their victory there – while shoving our noses into the dust left behind by their murderous attack. Muslims have long memories, and they teach their children to remember long-forgotten events. They have a long history of destroying symbols of...

Almost everything about the proposed Ground Zero mosque was cynically brilliant. Start with the notion of a “Cordoba Initiative.” In the elite modern Western mind, Cordoba has been transmogrified into a mythical Lala Land of interfaith tolerance. To invoke the city is to prove one’s ecumenical credentials. Just ask our president, who, in his June 2009 Cairo speech, fantastically claimed that the Muslim city taught us tolerance while Christians were launching the Inquisition (1478) — quite a feat two and a half centuries after most of the Muslims of Cordoba had fled, converted, or been cleansed during the city’s fall...

Yousef doesn’t mince words as he refers to Imam Rauf as a crazy person who is trying to put a ‘rock of division’ in the US that will cause lots of problems and violence. Yousef says that as a former x-Shin Bet officer he believes every mosque posses a danger to America. Wow.

Washington, Aug 17 - Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, released the following statement regarding the building of a NYC Mosque in close proximity to ground zero, “First and foremost, I understand the pain, trauma, and grief suffered by the men, women and children who lost their loved ones on 9/11. We cannot overstate the sacrifice made by the 9/11 families on that tragic day and every day since. The attacks on September 11th are the reason I was one of the original Members of the Homeland Security Committee and it remains the reason...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday that those who oppose the building of the mosque in NY City should be investigated. This is nothing more than an attempt at tyranny. Roll the tape: [VIDEO AT SITE] Read more at floppingaces.net...

The Director for Al-Arabiya TV, Abd Al-Rahman al-Rashid, has written that "Muslims never asked for" the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, and "do not care about its construction", on August 16 in a column for the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. “I can't imagine that Muslims [actually] want a mosque at this particular location, because it will become an arena for the promoters of hatred, and a monument to those who committed the crime,” wrote Al-Arabiya director Abd Al-Rahman al-Rashid in the column, which was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Moreover, there are no practicing Muslims in...

A proposal to build a Ku Klux Klan monument steps from the 16th Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama received the support of a downtown committee despite some loved ones of 1963 bombing victims finding it offensive. The 13-story White People’s Cultural Center was unanimously endorsed by the 12-member Community Board financial district committee. The $100 million project, called Fiery Cross, is proposed for the old laundromat building at 606 16th Street N, just one block from the site of the September 15, 1963 bombing by members of the Ku Klux Klan that took the lives of four children. “I...

Somebody please get a message to New York developer and fame-hound Donald Trump. Here is a way to do two things he is great at: 1] Stay forefront in the media eye with a hugely popular topic (the Mosque at Ground Zero), 2] Gather investors for a NYC real estate project. The way I understand it is that the Imam Rauf's Cordoba Initiative, now renamed as the much more benevolent-sounding Park51, requires that the old Burlington Coat Factory (not an historic landmark, mind you) AND the adjacent property owned by ConEdison be acquired. Here's an idea: Use capitalism and the...

Non-Muslims are barred from entering the cities of Mecca and Medina — not merely barred from building synagogues or churches, but barred, period, because their infidel feet are deemed unfit to touch the ground. This is not an al-Qaeda principle. Nor is it an “Islamist” principle. It is Islam, pure and simple. “Truly the pagans are unclean,” instructs the Koran’s Sura 9:28, “so let them not . . . approach the Sacred Mosque.” This injunction — and there are plenty of similar ones in Islam’s scriptures — is enforced vigorously not by jihadist terrorists but by the Saudi government. And...

Have we ever had a president so disconnected from the heart of America? On Friday night, at a White House iftar, the breaking of the Ramadan fast, Obama strode directly into the blazing controversy over whether a mosque should be built two blocks from Ground Zero. Speaking as though this were simply an open-and-shut case of constitutional law, Professor Obama declared that Muslims "have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country," including "the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan." Hailed by Mayor Michael...

NOTE The following text is a quote: FARC Associate Pleads Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to providing material support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization AUG 11 -- (MANHATTAN, NY) JOHN P. GILBRIDE, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York Field Division ("DEA") and PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced yesterday the guilty plea of JUANITO CORDOBA-BERMUDEZ, an associate of the 57 Front of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia ("FARC"), A Colombian terrorist group, to a Indictment charging him with participating in a conspiracy to provide material support to...

President Obama's fixation on all things Islamic tripped him up again this weekend when he seemed to give strong support to the Ground Zero Mosque project, then quickly "clarified" his way into yet more trouble. Mr. Obama gratuitously raised the mosque issue at an Iftar dinner with Muslim-American leaders, a double dose of symbolism that drew immediate fire. But just as Mr. Obama's defenders had settled on a "profile in courage" story line, the president backed off, lamely parsing his earlier statements. The president's stance on the issue is now fair game.... America's enemies clearly are delighted with the prospect...

One wonders about the symbolism of the Cordoba Initiative. Was Cordoba selected because in a multicultural context it represents a blending of harmonious cultures? If so, I’m not sure history quite supports such a usage. The city was founded by Romans and remained Western in some sense until conquered by Muslim invaders in 711, when it soon became a capital of what Muslims called al-Andalus, the Islamic foothold in southern Europe, the recurrence of which is so nostalgically evoked by bin Laden and Co. The president’s Cairo speech cited Cordoba as a beacon of tolerance during the Spanish Inquisition (“Islam...

The idea of “reframing” is a classic and consistent liberal tactic. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Democrat Party has loads of 5th Avenue marketing firms on retainer to reframe every issue they deal with. For example, Democrats have reframed abortion to be “choice” and homosexual behavior to be “gay” (or, as ORIGINALLY defined by Webster’s as “happy”). Whether you agree with abortion (i.e. “choice”) or homosexual behavior (i.e. being “gay”) it is obvious that the language has been reframed to change controversial issues into something more difficult to oppose. After all, who could oppose “choice”? Forget that it is...

After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero - the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York - it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site. ...

Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the tail end of a trip to Europe. "Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message," he told the Turkish Parliament. "My answer is simple: Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally." On the same visit, however, the president showed that he considered Turkey more firmly part of the Islamic world than of Europe. "I want to make sure that we end before the call to prayer, so we have about half...

Sam Harris: Ground Zero mega-mosque will be seen "by many millions of Muslims as a victory--and as a sign that the liberal values of the West are synonymous with decadence and cowardice" In "What Obama Got Wrong About the Mosque," August 13, Sam Harris breaks with the Leftist pro-Islamic supremacism lockstep that usually prevails at the Daily Beast and offers some common sense about the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero: Should a 15-story mosque and Islamic cultural center be built two blocks from the site of the worst jihadist atrocity in living memory? Put this way, the question nearly...

In the end, John Edwards was right. There are two Americas, though not based on Mr. Edward’s fairy tale of GOP rich and liberal poor. Those divisions of course exist, but the richest among us tend to belong to Mr. Edwards own party. The real dividing line in this country is: those that are for an Islamic Mosque and cultural center in the shadow of Ground Zero, and those that are against it. All polls show that the majority of this country falls into the latter category. Not surprisingly, President-out-of-touch Obama is for the mosque. From health care, to economic...

It is time for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to step up to the plate and investigate Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who is currently touring the Middle East at the expense of American Taxpayers as an envoy of her Department of State. Claudia Rossett, one of America's premier journalists, today reveals several disturbing facts that more than warrant an official investigation: ...what's going on with the web site of his Cordoba Initiative? Last week, after someone in his Malaysia office referred all questions back to his office in New York, the phone number and address of his office in Malaysia...

It is time for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to step up to the plate and investigate Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who is currently touring the Middle East at the expense of American Taxpayers as an envoy of her Department of State. Claudia Rossett, one of America's premier journalists, today reveals several disturbing facts that more than warrant an official investigation: ...what's going on with the web site of his Cordoba Initiative? Last week, after someone in his Malaysia office referred all questions back to his office in New York, the phone number and address of his office in Malaysia...

Last night something happened we were deeply hoping for, but never thought — not in a million years — the current “president” would be stupid enough to do. We knew he could never resist supporting the Ground Zero Victory Mosque when asked about it directly, but we assumed reporters would be smart enough to never ask him a question that would open a window for him to let more of his anti-American, West-hating true nature shine through. So, the fact that the current “president”, and leader of the Democrat Party, has come out in favor of building a symbol of...